Chrysalis: Maria Sibylla Merian and the Secrets of Metamorphosis

5858 BOOK REVIEW Journal of the Lepidopterists’ Society 62(1), 2008, 58–59 CHRYSALIS: MARIA SIBYLLA MERIAN AND represent them artistically in an “ecological” way, on THE SECRETS OF METAMORPHOSIS. By Kim their host plants and in the company of their natural Todd. 330 pages, 8 black-and-white and 8 color plates; 8 enemies. She suggests that Merian helped significantly x 5.25 in.; ISBN 978-0-15-603299-5 (paperback), ISBN in banishing the outlandish notions of spontaneous 978-0-15-101108-7 (hardcover); US$15 (paper). A generation and transformism that had colored zoology Harvest Book of Harcourt, Inc., Orlando, New York and right into the seventeenth century. In her Epilogue, she London. Publication date: 2007. attempts to tie her fascination with metamorphosis to As a penurious graduate student 40 years ago, I spent contemporary research in developmental genetics, a significant amount of my savings on a full-size insect hormones, and phenotypic plasticity. I think it is facsimile edition of Maria Sibylla Merian’s “Insects of fair to say that while she may have contributed some to Surinam.” Many years later my wife surprised me with the emergence of such science, her contemporary an authentic Merian butterfly plate, which hangs Swammerdam, for one, contributed quite a bit more. proudly in our living room. It shows the familiar Gulf Merian’s achievement is extraordinary enough without Fritillary, Agraulis vanillae. That plate lies at the very having to stretch to tie her to the latest stuff in “evo- heart of a mystery about Madame Merian. I read this devo.” book hoping it would solve that mystery. But it didn’t. Which brings us to the mystery. “That curious Person Madam Maria Sibylla Merian,” There is no doubt that Maria Merian reared many as her contemporary and patron James Petiver famously Lepidopterans to the adult, both in Europe and in styled her, was just that. Reared in Frankfurt in a family Surinam. Her extant notes and her illustrations make and social circle of publishers, printers, artists, that clear. But from the very beginning, the composition craftsmen and engravers, she found her vocation in of her paintings shows more “art” than “science.” Her collecting, rearing and painting caterpillars and what Book of Flowers, published in three volumes between issued from them: butterflies and moths, but also 1675 and 1680, portrays European garden and wild parasitoids. “She was,” as a tropical biologist quipped to flowers, often (usually!) accompanied by meticulously- me recently, “the Dan Janzen of her day.” Married at 16, rendered insects, including Lepidoptera—some of the mother of two daughters, she eventually tired of her most subtle representations I know of that fauna. But domestic arrangements and left her husband in order to the insects bear no “ecological” relationship to the join a religious commune. He tracked her to the flowers; they are clearly there only for artistic reasons. commune’s door and camped outside, but she refused Thus the Peony plate has a lovely female Lycaena to see him and eventually he went away and secured a phlaeas which, however, would have nothing to do with divorce. But she tired of the pietistic discipline and a Peony since it is neither a nectar source nor a larval moved to the bustling capital of Amsterdam, where, as a host. Likewise the Magpie Moth (Abraxas 52-year-old divorcee, she conceived the notion of grossulariata) shown with a garden hyacinth…and so traveling to the Dutch colony of Surinam on the north on. The seemingly random placement of insects with coast of South America to rear and paint tropical insects. plants becomes a real problem, however, when it comes And that is exactly what she did, setting sail in June to her Surinam work. Here, because almost everything 1699, accompanied by her 21-year-old daughter illustrated was new to science, the assumption that she Dorothy. They spent two years in Surinam. The was in fact giving an integrated “ecological” view of the resulting artworks made her reputation. life history was not only natural, and seemingly In writing a biography of this strong-willed, encouraged by her; it was frequently unjustified. Todd independent, fearless woman, Kim Todd has done her attempts to excuse the problem in terms of material lost scholarly homework. Because so little tangible evidence in shipment and so forth (p. 206). She also acts as if it is of Merian’s life exists, she artfully fills in the blank a minor problem. But it isn’t, and that takes us back to spaces with vignettes of life in the intellectual circles of the Gulf Fritillary plate in my living room. Germany and Holland, in the commune founded by Have you ever wondered why the Gulf Fritillary is Jean de Labadie, and in the sultry backwaters of the named vanillae when it has nothing to do with vanilla Guianas where slavery was an omnipresent evil. She (which comes from an orchid)? The name is Linnean, attempts to make a case that Merian was in fact a major from the Systema Naturae, 10th edition (1758), p. 482. innovator insofar as she attempted to pursue the life If you go to p. 482 (which you can do on-line, since the histories of Lepidopterans as integrated wholes and to entire work has been digitized and posted), you find VOLUME 62, NUMBER 1 59 Linnaeus gives the reference “Merian Surin. 25 t.25.— secrets of metamorphosis, why are so many of her plates Habitat in Epidendro vanilla. Americes.” And there is deceptive? (The one reproduced on the cover has a the plate, with upper and under surfaces of the Morpho, a non-morphid caterpillar, another Papilionid butterfly, somebody else’s caterpillar, and a cast skin of pupal case, and a flowering and fruiting branch of what appears to be a Papilionid pupa, all on a vanilla pomegranate—not a Surinam native.) Clearly, Kim orchid, just as the text says. The story is perfectly clear. Todd cannot tell us. Linnaeus described and named the animal from Merian’s plate—there never was a type-specimen—and Postscript: In 1999 Prestel-Verlag (Munich) he inferred that it lived on vanilla. (Johannes Fabricius published a lovely facsimile edition of (selected pages knew that the bug eats Passiflora and tried to rename it from) Merian’s Book of Flowers. It contains an passiflorae. But that’s another story. outstanding short biography of Merian by Thomas Another familiar tropical American butterfly, the Buerger (1999), which is not cited by Todd. If you White Peacock (Anartia jatrophae) presents an identical would like the solid story in concise form, shorn of its tale. Todd actually reproduces the guilty plate, background color but with an art historian’s slant, you representing the butterfly together with Cassava, might prefer it to Chrysalis. But Buerger doesn’t solve Manihot esculenta, but then called Jatropha manihot. the mystery either. Once again the describer (Linnaeus’ pupil Johansson, in his thesis which forms part of the compilation LITERATURE CITED Amoenitates Academicae) cites “Merian Surin. 4 t.4— BUERGER, T. 1999. Stations of an artist in the Baroque Age: Frankfurt am Main, Nuremberg, Amsterdam, Surinam. Pp. 82–88. in; M.S. Habitat in Jatropha. Americes (p.408).” Again no type Merian. New Book of Flowers. Prestel-Verlag, Munich. specimen, only an illustration and an unwarranted assumption. Anartia jatrophae does not eat Cassava. It ARTHUR M. SHAPIRO, Center for Population eats a bunch of other things, none of them in the Biology, University of California, Davis, CA 95616. e- Euphorbiaceae like Cassava. mail: [email protected]. So if Merian was so dedicated to working out the.

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